Page 1 of Exit Strategy
Prologue
Calanthe…
“You look just beautiful.”
My mother plucked at my long red hair, bringing some of it forward over my shoulders to frame my face. She was beaming with pride, and I couldn’t help but smile, too. It was July, my birth month, and I was just a few days past my fifteenth birthday.
The Presentation of Youth and Purity was an incredibly important event held once a year at the New Eden Centre. It was a debutante cotillion, a presentation of the young women of the faith, committing themselves to the teachings of Elijah Ellison Emerson and the vision of New Eden – blue skies, clear water, and a verdant and green Earth. All of the year’s debutantes were waiting for the August, Elijah Emerson to appear.
Before the actual Presentation, before the cotillion with the music, and the lights, and the beautiful dresses, we werepresented,a sort of inspection. My mother said it was a formality and I had nothing to be worried about. To be here was to have already passed everything that had to be passed. To get this far meant that I was in the very top. I knew I was in the top. I was a Youth Leader in the Youth Corps program, something I accomplished in just four years. I was a Goodwill Ambassador for the New Eden Centre and had not just gone on missions. I had even earned the right to sit at the planning table and help organize one.
There were a dozen of us, and I knew the others. They were Youth Leaders, Goodwill Ambassadors, Ristars who were expected to attend higher learning than the New Eden Academy could provide. They would become engineers, lawyers, and doctors, and then return to us.
The floor was cool under my bare feet. We were all barefoot, wearing the same snowy-white satin robes, our purity as a symbol.
It began in the morning with a private audience with Master Maxson, the Majordomo of the New Eden Centre. None of us knew what to expect, just that we were to file in and stand aside while the Majordomo had some words of wisdom for us. The hallway was rich and opulent, and each was attended by a designated chaperone—our mothers, older sisters, aunts, or a woman who was a patron to us. My chaperone was my mother. I fidgeted. August Emerson was on the other side of that door, waiting. I barely heard the rote speech the Majordomo was giving.
What words of wisdom would he share with us?
What secret words would he share with me?
So exciting!
“Okay, stop fidgeting. Remember your posture, eyes forward, smile, for Eden’s sake, smile,” my mother whispered hurriedly as the double doors to August Emerson’s office opened. The line of us girls fell into a hush, our excitement quivering in the air, the thrum of it running through each of us as we tried to hold still and not fidget as a man in a sharp suit stepped out and turned.
“His holiness, the right hand of Uriel, the prophet of the New Garden of Eden, August Elijah Ellison Emerson, will see you now,” he declared and when he nodded, the lead chaperone to the left of their charge touched their charge’s shoulder. I waited at the end of the line, the last to go. When it was my turn, I felt my heart lift in my chest as though lighter than air as I stepped forward, the gossamer skirt of my robe swishing against my thighs.
We filed in along a set of rich, wooden shelves lined with leather-bound books; the gilt lettering on their spines glittering in the morning light through the tall windows opposite them. I stopped and turned, my mother just behind me and to my right.
Oh my God, it’s really him!I thought. Emerson was the founder of the New Eden Centre and stood behind his heavy wooden desk as the man who announced he would be seen shut the doors behind them and put them to his back.
August Emerson smiled at us all and came around his desk.
“Good morning, First Daughters.”
“Good morning, August,” we chanted back to him.
He clasped his hands in front of him and eyed us all. His gaze settled on me. I felt myself flush lightly.August Emerson was looking at me! Me!I almost couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, now look at you,” he said, smiling, and came to me. He settled his hands lightly on my hips, and I froze. “Aren’t youalljust lovely?” he asked, and I felt myself blush harder.
He dropped his hands to his sides and said, “You may all disrobe.”
I blinked and would have jumped as I felt my mother’s hand tug at the bow holding my robe closed, but her other hand was firm on my shoulder. Panic bloomed inside me.
I flushed for a very different reason as my robe fell open. Underwear wasn’t part of the ceremonial morning dress, so I was completely exposed. More so when my mother took the insubstantial-to-begin-with dressing from my shoulders and swept it down my arms. I snuck a glance down the row of girls. Several were blushing, like me, with embarrassment, their chaperones all having done the same thing. August Emerson paced in front of us, staring, eyes never blinking.
I felt my eyes go wide when his holiness dropped to one knee in front of me. I looked down into his twinkling blue eyes, and it felt like my heart crawled into my throat as his fingertips traced the side of my face, down to my shoulder, and further down. Then he ghosted up the outsides of my thighs.
“You’re an exceptional young woman, Calanthe, a First Among First Daughters,” he said, and then he was touching the inside of my knee. I jumped when his fingertips skated up theinsideof my thighs, fingertips lightly brushing my sex. I felt my eyes brim with humiliated tears.
“Most exceptional.” He rubbed over the lips of my sex, and I tried not to quail from the invasive touch.
A small sob bubbled out of my throat and the tears fell. I blushed hotter when his finger slipped inside me. My mother’s hand clamped down harder on my shoulder, and I could feel her willing me to silence, to stillness.
“Oh, yes…” he breathed, his eyes closing. “You’ll make a great man a very fine wife indeed. So nice and tight.” I felt myself clench involuntarily.
His touch was gone almost as fast as it’d invaded me.
